MONTPELIER — Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders is praising the thousands of fast-food workers around the country who staged one-day strikes last week to protest low wages.

St. Louis, Kansas City and Detroit were among the cities that saw pickets by workers at McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Popeye’s and Long John Silver’s restaurants as part of a campaign to double their hourly wages to $15 an hour.

Sanders, a left-leaning independent, wants to raise the national minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25, where it’s been since 2009.

He said it was a “bogus argument” to say raising the minimum wage would mean fewer jobs. He noted that Vermont has the third-highest minimum wage in the country at $8.60 an hour and only 4.4 percent unemployment, the fourth lowest jobless rate in the United States.

Sanders said he met some fast-food workers when he visited Detroit earlier this summer.

“One young man I talked to is working at three separate locations to cobble together what in fact is less than a livable income,” Sanders said. “We have got to stand with them. We have got to raise the minimum wage in this country.”